Two Years In Prison For Using Infrared Contact Lenses To Cheat At Poker

dmfinn writes "It was back in 2011 when Stefano Ampollini and two accomplices cheated a French casino out of over €90,000 thanks to the help of Chinese-made infrared contact lenses. According to French authorities, Ampollini and two casino workers marked cards using an invisible liquid that would be picked up by the infrared lenses, which Ampollini then used to read his competitors' cards. Though the contacts themselves cost over €2,000, the crew managed to take €71,000 in their first night. However, the trio was finally caught when a lawyer working for the casino became suspicious after Ampollini folded with an unbelievably good hand, which suggested he knew the croupier's cards. This week, a French court sentenced Ampollini to two years in prison and a €100,000 fine. His main accomplice was handed an even harsher sentence; he was forced to pay the same fine and given a 36-month sentence. It appears, despite their best efforts and advanced tactics, that the men were still unable to beat the house without raising significant alarms. So, at least for now, it seems modern technology still can't simulate good old 'luck.'"

Comments

They were greedy

[bartron]

Be greedy and you raise suspicion. If you have a hand that you would consider a winning hand under normal circumstances then you play it, regardless if you know you will lose. Start doing impossible or improbable moves and you may as well be wearing a huge neon arrow sign on your head.

Re:They were greedy

[Joce640k]

The only surprising thing in this story is that casinos don't have infra-red cameras.

Re:They were greedy

[Tom]

This. Every cheater knows that to stay undetected, you can't win too often. Even aimbots quickly included code to intentionally miss a shot every now and then.

There are only two ways to get away with stealing money at a casino. One is to remain within the margin if probability - appear to be lucky, but not impossibly lucky. Either win some, lose some, with a total just slightly in your favour, or lose mostly, but then get the jackpot and stop playing after that. Make it a huge thing. Celebrate, rent a limo, marry a stranger, whatever. Don't pocket it and vanish, that'll be crazy suspicious.

Oh, the second way. That is, of course, to own the casino.

Re:They were greedy

[martin-boundary]

Nonsense. It's easy to monitor cheats, you certainly don't have to know if they're folding improbable hands or not. All you have to do is see how often they win. If they win too often, they're cheating. Stats don't lie.

Re:They were greedy

[jandersen]

Greedy? I suppose so. But it has always struck me as a funny way to look at things, when casinoes call people cheaters; they are the ones who invite people to come and throw their money out against overwhelming odds: "You MIGHT win" - yeah, and all the air molecules in the room might suddenly end up in one corner. After all, it is only probability that keeps it from happening.

The standard argument one always hears is that "Nobody forces people go and be stupid". All that means, IMO, is that some people don't have the backbone to stand up for decency.

Re:They were greedy

[thegarbz]

Which would bring them what precisely?

Casinos are well lit and have thousands of cameras viewing the floors from different angles. What benefit would it bring them to drop back to black and white where the only practical gain would be they can see in the dark? And if they did have IR cameras would they have sufficient resolution to detect a small dot on the back of a card?

Re:They were greedy

[AmiMoJo]

Anyone who wins more than once at a casino is under suspicion. The odds are against you. Winning big once is luck, twice is cheating.

Re:They were greedy

[Connie_Lingus]

nonsense.

i'm sure you have heard about standard deviation, haven't you? without it, *no one* would ever win at a casino and then, hopefully, no one would then be foolish enough to ever try. casinos would be out of business.

people win at casino's all the time...certain people even go on week long lucky streaks and defy the odds for days...without cheating.

i read the original story...there is some odd things about it. it reports that "two casino employees" marked the cards ahead of time and then "put the cards back in the cellophane". if i remember right, the whole purpose of the cellophane is to prevent this type of tampering and ive heard its pretty secure.

also, how in the world did anyone know exactly what decks of cards were going to be used at the time this guy was going to gamble? finally, people do all sorts of stupid shit when playing cards...hell i lived in vegas for 2 years and saw people double-down on 12 and hit 17s all the time in blackjack...talk about dumb.

its more likely that 1. no casino employees were needed for this scam 2. the guy marked the cards on-the-fly with ink on his fingers and 3. somebody snitched on him.

Re:They were greedy

[slick7]

Anyone who wins more than once at a casino is under suspicion. The odds are against you. Winning big once is luck, twice is cheating.

Anybody who walks into a casino is under suspicion. The casino thinks everybody who walks into a casino is a sucker and rightly so. Someone once said "Of course the game is rigged, but you can't win if you don't play."
Besides, the casinos are sanctioned by the government which doesn't like cheaters and theives, too much competion.

Re:They were greedy

[Anonymous Coward]

Even aimbots quickly included code to intentionally miss a shot every now and then.

but that's a terrible method of hiding an aimbot.. what gives them away isn't high accuracy, but inhuman movements.. the best way to hide it is to not have it aim for you, but only to have it shoot for you when you mouse over a target yourself.

source: i wrote hacks for cs and cheated in the highest ranks of CAL without ever being suspected let alone caught.

Re:They were greedy

[cruff]

Running a Google search on "infrared contact lens" turns up quite a few videos and sites devoted to "gambling tricks" that shows the backs of the cards are marked with rather large letters, numbers and symbols revealing which card is printed on the obverse side.

Re:They were greedy

[khallow]

The standard argument one always hears is that "Nobody forces people go and be stupid".

Yep. It pretty much is a discussion ender.

All that means, IMO, is that some people don't have the backbone to stand up for decency.

Or that "decency" of your sort is worthless. As I see it, I live in a mostly free country. That means people have the freedom to make bad decisions. And lo and behold, they do indeed make bad decisions. Maybe you should do something about the weather while you're at it.

Re:They were greedy

[turbidostato]

"Be greedy and you raise suspicion."

Win and you raise suspicion.

Re:They were greedy

[martin-boundary]

Standard deviation is an elementary statistic applicable mainly to normal populations. The beauty of stats is that many quantities (they're all technically called "statistics") can be monitored, and _all_ of them converge simultaneously to their distributional values due to the law of large numbers. Detecting deviations from the expected distribution is therefore a matter of monitoring several quantities simultaneously. In most cases, these will be of the Neyman Pearson variety, or approximations thereof, if you care to know.

Re:They were greedy

[Lumpy]

Right here.

He got himself caught by being greedy. If he would LOSE often he would have gotten away with it.

Re:They were greedy

[Lumpy]

Yes actually.

Currently most casinos have 1080P 120fps broadcast quality security cameras on the tables. They can see the slightest thing and zoom in to check the sex on the fly that just landed.

They also have cameras UNDER the table edge watching you if you try to hand off something to someone sitting next to you.

Re:They were greedy

[lxs]

This whole story reminds me a bit too much of the finale of God of Gamblers . I was always more interested in his jade ring than in his cheating contacts.

Re:They were greedy

[Rick Zeman]

This. Every cheater knows that to stay undetected, you can't win too often. Even aimbots quickly included code to intentionally miss a shot every now and then.

There are only two ways to get away with stealing money at a casino. One is to remain within the margin if probability - appear to be lucky, but not impossibly lucky. Either win some, lose some, with a total just slightly in your favour, or lose mostly, but then get the jackpot and stop playing after that. Make it a huge thing. Celebrate, rent a limo, marry a stranger, whatever. Don't pocket it and vanish, that'll be crazy suspicious.

Oh, the second way. That is, of course, to own the casino.

As Pittsburgh Phil is reputed to have said oh-so-many years ago, and just as applicable to casinos: "If you could beat the ponies they wouldn't be running 'em."

Re:They were greedy

[Cryacin]

And we're worried about the TSA checking out our wives panties?

Re:They were greedy

[Connie_Lingus]

right...we agree on this...but again, the article states that they became suspicious AFTER ONE SESSION. that just doesnt really makes sense, to me at least.

i'll say again, people can easily win for a couple of hours playing really really badly. it happens all the time. of course, even more people lose during this time too.

it's in the casino's interest, in order to prevent future attempts at cheating, to make up cover stories as to their prowess at catching cheats and to how complicated and difficult it really is. i believe Occam's razor should be applied.

Re:They were greedy

[Oligonicella]

Yep. Glaringly obvious difference is a casino owns their own house. Unless of course, you believe the government owns the country and not the other way 'round.

Re:They were greedy

[ciotog]

And we're worried about the TSA checking out our wives panties?

Yes, because there is never any real need to enter a casino.

On the other hand, flying is sometimes the only viable way to travel somewhere you need to go.

Re:They were greedy

[Connie_Lingus]

"overwhelming odds"...uhhh not really.

grabbing a "basic strategy" card from the casino store lowers your expected loss to about 0.6% of all money bet.

so you bet $10...the house has an expected win of only 6 cents. overwhelming? probably not.

Re:They were greedy

[Oligonicella]

... when casinoes call people cheaters; they are the ones who invite people to come and throw their money out against overwhelming odds:..."

The people cheating ARE cheaters and you provide zero proof the casinos cheat.

"You MIGHT win" - yeah, and all the air molecules in the room might suddenly end up in one corner. After all, it is only probability that keeps it from happening."

People DO win and air molecules NEVER wind up in one corner. You consider that an equivalent comparison? I don't. People who gamble are not unaware of the "overwhelming" odds.

I'll have to presume that the "decency" you claim to stand for is simply not allowing people to make their own decisions as to how to spend their leisure time.

Re:They were greedy

[TMB]

Casinos sell a product - entertainment. In particular, the thrill that you might win some (a lot) of money. People go and pay to experience that thrill. If you want to be entertained by something different, that's fine, but it's not stupid to like a little thrill and be willing to pay a little for it.

Re:They were greedy

[TheCarp]

That sounds very plausible. I bet a real player has a firing solution on a target far more often than he actually realizes it. Though knowing the technique does give some ideas on how to catch it.

> source: i wrote hacks for cs and cheated in the highest ranks of CAL without ever being suspected let alone caught.

Which I think brings up one of the reason casinos attract cheats beyond the money. Cheating and winning is a game too. In fact, its really no different from a bluff, you are not playing by the same rules, but you want to look like you are. However, in a casino, you have to do it while sitting in front of real people. I have to imagine that is a rush and a half....which like bluffing.... is also why so few can really do it well consistently.

If your motivation is being the best cheater.... then no amount of bitching about how it ruins the game for the rest of us is going to help.

Amusingly, I have a relative who is um I think almost 14 now. He started running cheats in games a couple of years ago after some cheater did something and convinced a bunch of other people he was the one running cheats. So they banned him and he started googling to figure out what they were talking about! Next thing you know, he is griefing himself.

Ahhhh kids.

Re:They were greedy

[martin-boundary]

Sorry, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:They were greedy

[rasmusbr]

Even aimbots quickly included code to intentionally miss a shot every now and then.

but that's a terrible method of hiding an aimbot.. what gives them away isn't high accuracy, but inhuman movements.. the best way to hide it is to not have it aim for you, but only to have it shoot for you when you mouse over a target yourself.

source: i wrote hacks for cs and cheated in the highest ranks of CAL without ever being suspected let alone caught.

It would still make sense to have it miss X% of the time to avoid detection by someone who gathers statistics. The cheater could then vary X manually so that misses are much more likely at points in the game where it doesn't really matter anyway. If asked the cheater could claim to be more focused when it matters.

Since you didn't get caught I suspect you probably missed shots intentionally at points in the game when you could afford to miss.

Re:They were greedy

[martin-boundary]

Think of it like this... Suppose you have a simple game of heads or tails. If you have a biased coin that shows heads 60% of the time, and tails only 40%, then if you start off with enough money to begin with, you can play for a long time, winning and losing. But the casino will very quickly figure out that you're not playing with a 50/50 coin, way before you come anywhere near losing all your money, or making a bundle.

Now casinos see so many players coming and going, they have very detailed stats on how a typical person behaves, and that's even before you add the mathematical analysis of the game per se. So if *you* aren't acting like 99% of the *stupid* people who go there every day, you're already suspicious and probably a cheater. Let's say the casino needs 100 events to classify you as being different from 99% of players... say there are 5 events being monitored per round, then they'll identify you within 20 rounds. That's a couple of hours at most.

(I use the word event for a reason - namely they need not have anything to do with the amount that's being won. They could be how many times you're going to the toilet in an hour, how often you drink, how many people you talk to, etc. Everything you do can classify you as being normal or an outlier especially when there are so many player stats that have already been collected for years)

Re:They were greedy

[Joce640k]

Which would bring them what precisely?

All sorts of things. eg. They could see if people are wearing wires, have toasty little computers strapped to their legs, etc.

Re:They were greedy

[__aaltlg1547]

This. Every cheater knows that to stay undetected, you can't win too often.

As the article demonstrates, that's not the case. Sit up and learn.

Re:They were greedy

[__aaltlg1547]

They were playing poker. He cheated the other players at the table.

Re:They were greedy

[hodet]

Casinos post all odds on house games. Any sane person knows the odds are against them. There is no deception. The average person who goes to a Casino goes with a hope of beating the odds and also having a good time. The atmosphere, friendly service etc etc. They budget an amount they can afford to lose. I have done it myself. Problem gamblers are mathematically challenged if they think they can beat the house. I think the only way you can possibly win long term is to cheat or play poker. In poker you only need to be better then your opponents, you don't play against the house, but they will take a cut with the rake. And to be clear only the very best make money at poker long term, the rest (majority) are donators.

Re:They were greedy

[ceoyoyo]

Interesting... we all carry toasty little computers these days. How do casinos know if my smartphone is helping me count cards or not?

Re:They were greedy

[ceoyoyo]

You've demonstrated you, like most people, don't know anything about statistics. What you say is possible, with a pure chance based game, if you collect an infinite dataset. Most people have to leave the table before that happens. In addition, he was playing poker. Poker has a human element. You can guess your opponents' cards legitimately by keeping track of their play style.

Re:They were greedy

[houghi]

Every cheater knows that to stay undetected, you can't win too often.

This goes for everything. Not just casino's.

Many years ago, I had a friend who did control of checkout at a large supermarket chain in Belgium. This was before cards were widely used. The way they caught the thieves was because they stole the same amount every day. e.g. 10EUR each day.

The one way around this specific situation was to take different amounts out of the till each day. Even better if some day you would have a surplus once in a while.

Oh and on that 'Make it a huge thing.' I will then be very suspicious if I would win anything. I would want to get out as quietly as possible. I would not celebrate. I would not rent a limo. I would check out and leave. But then I am not a gambler.

Re:They were greedy

[sjames]

Without a detailed account, it's hard to be sure, but possabilities include:

The insiders were dealers. They could be sure to pick the right decks up and the cellophane would only need to be good enough to withstand a quick casual look.

Not all of the cards in play were marked, but enough were to significantly skew the odds. The cheater could scope out the tables and see which ones seemed to have the most marked cards in play.

Re:They were greedy

[sjames]

The vig isn't that big in a legit casino. Many people go and have a great time. A percentage of them come home with more money than they started with. There are people who should never go to a casino just like there are people who should never drink.

A can see reason for complaint when casinos ban you for winning too often with no evidence whatsoever that you weren't just lucky or very skillful and a little lucky (and some do that), but that's outside of the odds and the games themselves.

Re:They were greedy

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And they found two sets of prints -- hers, and a guy who works at Little Ceasar's as a driver.

Re:They were greedy

[paiute]

No need for the TSA. I checked your wife's panties last night.

(Btw, everything's a-ok.)

No so fast. We sequenced her DNA. She's his sister.

Re:They were greedy

[Jeremy Erwin]

Marking the cards is *cheating*.It's not playing the game as it was meant to be played.

I don't care if you use math, or count cards, or play well. But honest poker players don't mark the cards.

Re:They were greedy

[CastrTroy]

Technically, you are right, except for blackjack. Blackjack odds are so close to being 50/50 that even a little bit of knowledge about which cards are left in the deck can actually tip the odds in your favour. You can do this by keeping track of how many high cards vs low cards have been dealt. Counting cards is not illegal or even cheating, providing you can accomplish it just using your own brain. They can still kick you out, but it isn't cheating. You can't get charged with any crime, and you get to keep any winnings. Of course counting cards isn't quite as easy as some think, so they don't even make that big of a deal about it, until you make a very large amount of cash, because for every person who really can count cards properly, there's hundreds or thousands who can't count properly and who will keep on losing money where they think that if they just refine their skill that little bit more, they will come out on top. Also even those who can count will sometimes get greedy and irrational and make the wrong bet. Lastly, having someone win big is it's own kind of advertising. The rest of the people at the table will see somebody winning, and think it's possible for them to do the same.

Re:They were greedy

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Yes, the cheaters who knew this have not been caught. It does not mean they don't exist. I am sure there is a whole bunch of them pissed off by this greedy hack who have derailed their gravy train they have been riding for a long time.

Re:They were greedy

[Solandri]

Pretty much all cameras can already see IR. Unlike our eyes, the CCD or CMOS sensor are sensitive to infrared. Manufacturers just put in an IR-blocking filter so it doesn't mess up the colors displayed on the screen (the sensor will encode invisible IR as red). Very bright IR sources can still get through the filter - point a remote control at a video camera and push a button some time. So if the casinos wanted to see IR, all they'd have to do is instruct the manufacturer not to put in an IR filter. They'd lose color accuracy, but would be able to see IR.

The same thing is true to a lesser extent with UV. That's what the ubiquitous skylight filter for your SLR is - a UV blocker.

Re:They were greedy

[Shadow of Eternity]

The human eye can see near IR perfectly well, there's plenty of instructions online for safely blocking out everything else.

Re:They were greedy

[Shadow of Eternity]

High level gamers routinely have near perfect accuracy statistics anyway, it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Re:They were greedy

[billstewart]

Casinos also cheat if they don't let you count cards at blackjack, or if they've rigged the slot machines to have even worse odds than they're supposed to, or if they claim that the machine is "broken" and stiff the customer when it pays out a jackpot it wasn't supposed to (even if it was broken, as occasionally happens.)

Re:They were greedy

[ceoyoyo]

I/O devices? Bounce your knee one way for +1, the other way for -1.

Yes, if you were greedy you'd get caught. If you just used it to enhance your play a little, you'd probably be okay. Counting cards isn't illegal. Using devices to do so is.

Re:They were greedy

[Tom]

Oh and on that 'Make it a huge thing.' I will then be very suspicious if I would win anything. I would want to get out as quietly as possible. I would not celebrate. I would not rent a limo. I would check out and leave. But then I am not a gambler.

If you cheat then you want to look like you didn't cheat.

Anyone winning big through actual luck would make it a big thing, celebrate, rent a limo, whatever. If you don't act that way, you'll set off alarm bells.

Re:They were greedy

[Tom]

but that's a terrible method of hiding an aimbot..

I know and I know how to write better ones, and yours is one of the simple and yet almost undetectable approaches.

My point was that even in the very, very early days of aimbots, before such refinement, one of the very first thing the cheaters learnt was that you can't hit with every shot or it's immediately obvious that you are cheating.

Re:They were greedy

[wisnoskij]

But there is a huge huge huge gap between 96% and 100%
That last percentage point is a bigger gap than pretty much all previous 99 percentage points.

Re:They were greedy

[cas2000]

so conspicuous consumption is mandatory?

if i was stupid enough to be a gambler, and lucky enough to have a big win, i user as hell wouldn't be wasting any of my winnings on a damn limo.

what's the point of even trying to win if you're just going to piss it all up against the wall?

OTOH, if i was stupid enough to be a gambler, i'd probably be stupid enough to do that too.

Re:They were greedy

[wisnoskij]

Casinos and gambling are not that bad.
Ever one I know who has ever gone to one either broke-even, won some, or got quite a lot of entertainment for their small investment.
By your logic the movie theatre is 1000% worse, as they have far lower chance of winning money or breaking even, specifically their is a 100% chance of losing money there (while some games at the casino are only like 5% in the favour of the house).

Re:They were greedy

[wisnoskij]

What I do not understand is poker. they have poker at casinos, but how does the house have an advantage at poker?

Re:They were greedy

[SEE]

or if they claim that the machine is "broken" and stiff the customer when it pays out a jackpot it wasn't supposed to (even if it was broken, as occasionally happens.)

The casino is specifically prohibited by law from paying out if the machine is broken.

Now, you then obviously would wonder, why is it prohibited by law?

And the answer is, because it makes money laundering incredibly easy. A drug cartel lord sends a bunch of minions into your casino with his in-cash drug profits, they lose it on a whole bunch of bets all over the place. Then he personally walks in uses the broken machine the two of you set up, and walks out with a whole pile of legitimately-won-from-a-casino-on-the-dollar-slots money.

Re:They were greedy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been banned from bars for beating 8 line slot machines.

Long story short, there is a group of 8 line slot machines that are beatable in the short term.

It took me almost ten years to figure out the weakness and when I finally did, overnight I went from random wins to reliable wins.

It's not exactly cheating, it's varying your bet when it's most advantageous to do so. I was even able to do it while the owner of a bar sat next to me and she didn't suspect anything because the things that I did were not suspicious on their face but the result was that I won a lot. I won more than they should I *should have* so one day the owner calls me over and says "...you're too lucky. We don't want you to play here any more."

Another bar that I played at eventually replaced the machine that I could beat with another variant that lacked the weakness. A third bar upgraded their machine to remove the vulnerability. There are still a couple of places that I visit that have the beatable machines. I make sure to intentionally lose every once in a while to keep them off of my trail.

I have no doubt that it I was up against casino level security, I'd get caught and banned.

Re:They were greedy

[Lord Kano]

The AK-47 is considerably less accurate than the M-16. Granted, CS made it far worse than it needed to be. A skilled rifleman can put shots into a paper plate at 150 yards all day.

LK

Re:They were greedy

[stenvar]

By definition, people can't see infrared. If they could, it would be "red".

Re:They were greedy

[AK Marc]

What, are you too lazy to drive to Hawaii?

Re:They were greedy

[AK Marc]

Only the cheaters ever came up with overages. "normal" tills end up short a small percentage. If you are off by a tiny amount in the favor of the customer, nobody would complain. But short them 1%, and they'll make sure you correct it. So to end up over, you have to cheat the till.

Come up 99% accurate 100 times and $10 or $20 short once in a long while, and you'll get away with it. Or always come up short when you skim from the till, but not too much. Round numbers look bad. Exactly $10 or $20 off, and they'll think you pocketed a bill. Even with 100% surveilance, you can always get a bill. "accidentally" drop it, and kick it out of the camera angle, then palm it as you are putting it back in, or other tricks. Best when you know they are watching and you do it anyway. Then they can't suspect you.

Re:They were greedy

[AK Marc]

what's the point of even trying to win if you're just going to piss it all up against the wall?

That's what "real" gamblers do. They are there for the thrill of the win, not the money. Someone playing for the money *must* be a cheat. Or stupid. Sometimes both.

Re:They were greedy

[wonkey_monkey]

The human eye can see near IR perfectly well

Re:They were greedy

[wonkey_monkey]

Every cheater knows that to stay undetected, you can't win too often.

This guy apparently didn't.

Re:They were greedy

[Godwin O'Hitler]

So why doesn't he just make his living out of broken machines and forget the drug bit?

Re:They were greedy

[Tom]

I'm not sure if you are intentionally dense or having an entirely different conversation. The one I was having was about how to appear like a normal, lucky gambler when in fact you are cheating.

Re:They were greedy

[ottothecow]

Huh? The house doesn't have an advantage. They charge you a fee for playing at their table.

Of course, when they take a rake, it means it is no longer a zero sum game (less money leaves the table than comes in), but you can still win by being better than the other players.

Re:They were greedy

[stenvar]

Ah, I see your problem. "Near IR" doesn't mean "visible light near IR", it means "IR near visible light". You can't see "near IR" any more than you can see "far IR".

Re:They were greedy

[stenvar]

The concept you're looking for is "deep red"; that's the wavelength that's barely visible but not quite IR yet.

Re:They were greedy

[rioki]

Ah yes...

step one: install new game
step two: join random server
step three: get banned from server for "suspicious accuracy" after 5 min of play

Yes, fun things these newfangled shooters.

Re:They were greedy

[Yer Mom]

You could get an amphibious vehicle.

They don't always catch fire.

Re:They were greedy

[SB2020]

They don't. They don't care who wins or loses as it is PVP. The house takes a percentage of each pot (the 'rake') so house is always winning whilst players play.

Re:They were greedy

[SB2020]

No - they were playing Stud poker and the summary states "he must have known the croupiers cards", ergo they were playing Caribbean Stud or similar variation where it is player vs house.

Re:They were greedy

[Shadow of Eternity]

http://amasci.com/amateur/irgoggl.html

Re:They were greedy

[EndlessNameless]

You're focusing on the wrong issue there.

Money laundering is about taking money obtained illegally and providing a credible legal source for it. It's essentially creating a false paper trail.

If a drug lord has millions he didn't pay taxes on, he can be imprisoned for tax evasion. But he can't very well put "income from drug trafficking - 2010, $3,800,000" on his tax forms.

The drug lord isn't rigging the machine. His buddy the casino operator does that. The operator takes a small cut in exchange for a documentable paper trail.

The law against paying out on "broken" machines closes that exploit (from a legal perspective, anyway).

Re:They were greedy

[stenvar]

If you look at that, you'll see that the "IR goggles" they are building pass wavelengths between 650nm and 700nm. Even nominally, infrared begins at 700nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared

Near infrared is about 750nm-1400nm

Re:They were greedy

[stenvar]

By the way, the accompanying paper does claim that you can produce some visual response even beyond 700nm. I find those claims dubious at best given what we know about how color vision works, and they are likely more due to experimental error. Even if they were true, I don't see how that would help you cheat under realistic circumstances.

Re:They were greedy

[mattack2]

Don't they shuffle decks more often too, to make card counting more difficult?

Also, how far can you get in your favor? The Wikipedia page says approx 1% over the casino for a 'typical' card counter, but "Advantages of up to 2.5% are possible at normal penetrations from counting 6-deck Spanish 21, for the S17 or H17 with redoubling games.". Do you have more info than that?

Re:They were greedy

[cas2000]

yeah, which is why i asked if conspicuous consumption was mandatory.

Re:They were greedy

[Godwin O'Hitler]

OK, fair enough. The collusion part was what I missed.
But what if we doing away with something further down the line: why can't Mr Big Drug Man just exchange the money directly with the Casino owner, who provides him with the necessary paperwork? Or are you saying every machine generates a record of who won what?
I genuinely know next to nothing about casinos and have no idea how cashing a jackpot win works.

Re:They were greedy

[jandersen]

...the movie theatre is 1000% worse...

No - when you go to the cinema, you buy a product, and if you find that you have paid for something that is significantly different from what was advertised, you can complain and possibly even get your money back.

On the other hand, gambling outlets never advertize with "Come and lose a bit of money on a couple of hours of poker surrounded by tacky glitter"; their adverts are more along the lines of "Imagine if you won the jackpot" - something that is manifestly unlikely. IOW, they are clearly selling a lie; and the fact that the objective, average losses are fairly small doesn't really mean that it is OK - cheating your customers a little is still cheating.

You may argue that we should allow a little bit of cheating, because the harm is limited and so on, but that is another discussion altogether. Cheating is cheating even if we tolerate it, so let us call it by its real name.

Re:They were greedy

[wisnoskij]

I think it is all about perspective. From another perspective, I could say that the casinos sell a dream; You can go to a casino and for a few hours imagine that you are going to walk out a millionaire, all your financial troubles solved.

And yes, they do such a good job that some people get obsessed and ruin their lives, but the majority get exactly what they paid for.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason he got caught was because he folded with a great hand. He wasn't playing as if he was being watched the entire time. The technology had nothing to do with it, except perhaps make him cocky.

Just avoid being stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, how did the "lawyer working for the casino" know the hand that the crook folded with? That sounds like we are talking about crooks on both sides. An important part of poker is that folding does not expose your betting strategy.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[Dahamma]

How about this: RTFA and as usual it answers all of your questions and more...

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[phantomfive]

My other question is how did they figure out he was using special contacts? I feel like he could have easily bluffed his way out of this.

(According to the article) once the casino got suspicious, they called the betting police (whatever those are), who used telephone surveillance to figure out how they had cheated.

So once you raise suspicions, you need to avoid surveillance.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[Barny]

Don't be so harsh on them. They read 2-3 lines of information on the internet. Not only are those lines absolute truth but no more information is needed before wild speculation and drama can be generated.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[worf_mo]

TFA does not answer how the casino knew the crook had an excellent hand:

"security found his behavior rather strange as he won very easily and, above all, because he folded twice when he had an excellent hand, suggesting he knew the croupier's cards."

How would anybody know what hand he had? I thought cards were only seen by the player, and when a player folds his cards are not exposed.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[bruce_the_loon]

Depends on the form of the game. In the televised Texas Hold'em games, some of the cards are exposed, others are held covered for the viewers. A decent croupier would have a gut feeling about how the game is going and roughly what hand the players have.

He did confess, and impressed the judge with it. Given the chap's age and location, he probably was an honourable gentleman who decided once he was caught, not to drag out the obvious, I guess to save his honour.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[Half-pint HAL]

Yes, there are cameras everywhere in a casino. Yes, they can see everyone's hands. No that doesn't have to mean they are cheating. The people who can see the camera monitors are not in communication with the dealers. They go straight to the lawyers apparently.

Wow, lawyers as security guards? That'll cost a pretty penny. I'm surprised the casinos haven't negotiated down to lesser sworn officers-of-the-court... like bailiffs and bounty hunters....

Re:Just avoid being stupid

[DerekLyons]

On the other hand, how did the "lawyer working for the casino" know the hand that the crook folded with? That sounds like we are talking about crooks on both sides.

Unless French casinos are very different from American ones, you're under video surveillance pretty much constantly once you're inside and especially when seated at a table game.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[devman]

If they suspect your cheating, among other things, the house might start saving your mucked hands, set them aside basically, for analysis. The house always plays by set rules, so there is no advantage to them looking at your cards.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[worf_mo]

Ah, the way you describe it makes sense. I'm not familiar with casino rules, and the two articles didn't mention this, so I just thought mucked hands had to be put back into the stack without being looked at by anybody, house included. Thanks.

Re: Just avoid being stupid

[Dahamma]

TFA (and all related articles) seem to be omitting some of the specifics of the crime.

Not true at all.

exactly what game was being played

TFA clearly stated Stud Poker, which is the European equivalent of Vegas' Caribbean Stud. If you haven't heard of it, not their problem.

how the casino detected the cheating

TFA said they caught an employee who confessed, and then they contacted the police who set a trap for the rest of the crew. And they caught the employee by monitoring phone conversations. And they suspicion was raised because they were watching the hands (of COURSE they are watching your hands - and it makes no difference, since in Stud Poker, like Caribbean Stud or even Blackjack, the dealer doesn't make decisions, they play by set rules. And the crime was specifically employees marking cards with infrared ink, with a spotter wearing infrared contacts signaling a player. That's a crapload of details for a random article on the event. CERTAINLY enough that "this story smells suspicious" is just idiotic.

ACs don't RTFA, big surprise I guess. But jeez, I'm surprised how far you'd go to defend that you did...

Outliers and out and out liars...

[DontScotty]

If you find a way to game the gaming system, you will appear as an anomaly.

And, anomaly detection will highlight you as such.

Winning at a game of chance over a long enough sample period? Cheating is more probable than an improbable string of luck.

The only effective way to steal is to steal from people who are powerless to detect it, powerless to stop it, or weak enough in both areas.

Can you win the day at a casino? YES.

Can you win during your entire life? YES, considering your life will probably be forfeit when you've stolen too much from the wrong people.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[Anonymous Coward]

Poker is a bit more than 'a game of chance'. There's a chance element, of course, but skill is a major factor. The most important aspect is you're not playing against the house. There's no such thing as 'winning the day at a casino' in poker. 'It's all one big session.'

It's not a typical casino game like roulette or craps where you're playing against the house and the payouts are structured such that every bet has negative expectation. If you consistently play against people who make worse betting decisions than you, you will be a consistent winner in the long term.

So your assertion that winning over a long period in poker is cheating is false (although, it is true that most players are long-term losing players).

The reason the casino went after them is that it's in the casinos interest to run a fair game. The casino takes a cut of each pot over a certain amount, and some also collect an hourly vig from sitting at the table. Players won't play in an unfair game though, so the casino has to protect this model or lose its players. It was the threat of an indirect loss of money that necessitated action, not that the players were taking directly from the casino.

And the reality is - these guys got caught because they were greedy. There have been several highly publicised (within the poker community anyway) cases of cheating, and its always the same. The cheater makes some ridiculous reads, bets / bluffs consistently at the right time with very marginal holdings, or folds big hands in big pots when they are beat. Once that suspicion is triggered, anyone who understands the game will spot it easily.

If they were smart, they would be much more subtle about it, losing their fair share but making sure they get the big pots. Once the cash starts rolling in though, I guess it's very hard to resist pushing it just a little too hard.

Casinos take this shit very seriously. From a purely academic point of view the IR contact lenses are an interesting concept, but you have to be pretty damn stupid to try it so brazenly.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[phantomfive]

Winning at a game of chance over a long enough sample period?

FWIW poker is a game of skill.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting - but they weren't playing poker against other players ...

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[sociocapitalist]

...when you've stolen too much from the wrong people.

So it's stealing when you control the odds but it's not stealing when the 'wrong people' control the odds?

Just who is stealing from whom here?

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the article say that? It mentions "the cheater knew the croupier's cards" - are you suggesting that the croupier participates in the action in a standard poker game like Texas Holdem?

It seems that they were playing Caribbean Stud Poker, which is a game where the players compete against the house, and where the croupier does indeed have a hand representing the house.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[Half-pint HAL]

It's a game of chance, and awareness off the odds allows you to make judgement calls and improve your chances. "Skill" is a strong word.

Re: Outliers and out and out liars...

[DontScotty]

Please re-read for comprehension....

The wrong people are the ones who will kill you.

In no way am I saying stealing is right.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[sjames]

In a real sense, catching cheaters is part of what the other players were paying the casino to do. It did it's job.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[phantomfive]

It's more than awareness of odds. I judge it as a game of skill because a person can increase their skill to the point that they regularly win over people who don't. In a single hand, a person might get lucky and win, but that is why the game goes longer than a single hand. You have to know how to manage your cash pile, you have to know how the odds change as people leave the game, it helps to be able to read people.

It's true that it is a mixture of luck and skill but so is chess.

Re:Outliers and out and out liars...

[adamchou]

It's a game of chance, and awareness off the odds allows you to make judgement calls and improve your chances. "Skill" is a strong word.

Not in Texas Hold'em... Annette Obrestad won a tournament looking at her cards only once and playing position the rest of the tournament

In July 2007, Obrestad won a $4 buy-in 180 person online sit-and-go where she claims to have played almost the entire tournament without looking at her cards. She claims she peeked at her cards once during the tournament, when she was faced with an all-in bet. She did this to show "just how important it is to play position and to pay attention to the players at the table."

Re: Outliers and out and out liars...

[sociocapitalist]

Please re-read for comprehension....

The wrong people are the ones who will kill you.

In no way am I saying stealing is right.

Oh I understood - was just pointing out that organized gambling is stealing in both ways it's just that in one direction it's legal to game the system and the other it's not.

They got off easy

[VinylRecords]

Two years? For cheating at cards? That's nothing. Lots of people are killed over cheating at high stakes gambling. You cheat the casinos and they usually take it up with the police and lawyers. They can't break your legs and keep operating a legitimate business.

You cheat a private game? You deal with individuals who might smash your fucking face in and throw you in a six foot feet hole in the desert. At the very least you get beaten within an inch of your life and then they take back all of your 'winnings'. Those guys should have tried to get into a private game where high rollers in organized crime or even professional sports play.

The most hilarious part about this story though. Is that there are bankers that make billions cheating the system. Insider trading, fraud, embezzlement, Ponzi scheme, and so on. And those guys get a free pass as long as they throw the occasional six-figure-pass to the politicians. These morons get two years for cheating the casinos.

Re:They got off easy

[phantomfive]

You cheat a private game? You deal with individuals who might smash your fucking face in and throw you in a six foot feet hole in the desert.

I am kind of worried about the kind of people you play poker with.....For me the worst that would happen is they'd make me buy donuts for the next poker-night....

Re:They got off easy

[martin-boundary]

Eh? Killing people would be illegal.

If you're going to allow illegal killing of people as a valid penalty things, then you might as well say that anyone who isn't killed gets off easy for /anything/.

Re:They got off easy

[AC-x]

Well, yes, killing people is illegal, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. This case springs to mind, Akio Kashiwagi was winning big against Trump's casinos. Trump managed to tempt Akio into playing a high stakes game that he lost big time. Before Trump got his money the Yakuza murdered Akio, presumably because they were bank-rolling him.

Re:They got off easy

[Half-pint HAL]

I don't think you need a specific law against cheating at gambling, as long as you already have laws against fraud. Cheating in a for-profit game is fraudulent, because everyone in the game has agreed to play by the same set of rules.

Re:They got off easy

[Carewolf]

That is actually a good question. Sounds like more of a civil case than a criminal one. Cheaters can be forced to pay back the winning and banned for life in all casinos, but go to jail??

Re:They got off easy

[PlusFiveTroll]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff#Government_access

Are you retarded? 'Made off' was ignored for near a decade while committing questionable acts.

Re:They got off easy

[Le Marteau]

Laws specifically addressing cheating are absolutely required. By your example, simple breaches of the rules would lead to jail.

For example, the rules of craps say that you pick up and throw the dice with one hand. Touching the dice with both hands at the same time is forbidden. Doing so is against the rules.

So this simple breach of the rules... according to you, would lead to jail.

Re:They got off easy

[Le Marteau]

Yes. For significant amounts of time. In Nevada, the courts take cheating very seriously and issue sentences involving years of jail time for cheating at a casino.

Re:They got off easy

[Godwin O'Hitler]

The French have laws for just about everything you can imagine. Highly detailed laws too. No relying on common law for them.

Re:They got off easy

[Half-pint HAL]

That's a strawman. Fraud requires into to... well... defraud, so it only counts when you break the rules for personal profit. The one-handed rule in craps is to prevent cheating (introduction of loaded dice or manipulation of spin. Breaking the rule isn't instantly and undoutedly cheating, but if you break the rule and win, the croupier is well within his rights to refuse to pay up. In order to charge someone with fraud, you'd have to have significant evidence beyond breaking the rules.

Cheaters are bad poker players

[tsotha]

This reminds me of the Absolute Poker scandal in 2007. Even a relative novice should realize at some point you have to lose a showdown so it isn't obvious you're cheating.

and this is on slashdot because...?

[npwa]

oh, yes - an expensive gadget was used in a crime. news at 11

Just not careful ... etc... use data and analysis

[theNAM666]

OK, point looks to already have been made (-1, redundant?)

They weren't careful. A careful strategy, would not raise alarms by taking extraordinarily high wins, and would accept reasonable losses, ie, not fold with a great hand *even if* you know you'll loose.

What you'd want, is to scrape in marginally better positive wins, not great hits, -- and then move on. Heck, just in case, take some more-than-usual losses at some casinos. Build a data model; speadsheet it; look for a reasonably higher ROI, say 50%/annum on the operation, not spectacular wins.

Information missing from summary and articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people associate "poker" with games where the players compete against each other, rather than the house. Texas Holdem and Draw poker are two well known variants. Many casinos have poker tables now - they provide a dealer, and make their money by taking a small percentage of each pot.

The article talks about Stefano Ampollini knowing which cards the croupier had. The croupier would not have any cards in a normal game of poker.

Looking at their website, it appears that the Les Princes Casino in Cannes does not have any normal poker tables. Instead, they run a casino game called "Casino Stud" or "Caribbean Stud Poker". It is a normal casino game that gives the house a 5% edge if the player uses the best possible strategy.

The players must ante before each game. After they have seen their cards, if they want to continue they must place a "raise" - a bet which is double the ante.

When the cheat decided whether or not to raise, he looked at the dealer's face down hand. He knew if the dealer would win or lose before he made his "raise" bet.

It's likely that the casino knew the cheat's cards from the video surveillance footage.

Your Bullshit is BS

[frovingslosh]

You're leaving out something really important and the real reason that he got caught: the casino was cheating too. Otherwise they wouldn't know that he had good cards when he folded. When he, or anyone else, folds, they just throw in their cards face down and those cards are not exposed for all players to see. The casino can't legitimately claim that they know he was cheating because he folded on good hands unless they were cheating and knew what his hands were.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[wvmarle]

It was not the croupier, but some casino lawyer who got suspicious. For all we know this lawyer could have been in the audience, just standing behind the player looking at the player's cards.

Besides, the casino's play is usually bound to fixed rules, and the croupier has no influence on it.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[Demonantis]

You have obviously never watched serious poker. You look at your cards by lifting the corner with your hands over it. You have no idea if an audience person is sending signals intentionally or by mistake.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[Greyfox]

The local casinos use card shuffling machines that could easily be capable of knowing what order the deck's in, for times when allegations of cheating and misdeals are raised. I don't see any evidence of CCTVs at card level for the times whey they're dealing manually, but they're a very heavily monitored environment and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that they did. The article's vague about how the casino knew the hand. It could be the guy was a jackass and showed his cards to show off what a "good" poker player he was. Or a casino employee could have just put him on the hand because if you're in a hand at a certain point there are really only a few hands you could have.

It wouldn't really be cheating on the part of the casino since they don't have any stake in the game other than to make sure it's played fairly. They get their rake off every hand but you're not playing the house in poker.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[InvalidError]

Normal floor staff does not communicate with the security and anti-cheating staff.

What likely happened:
1- anti-cheating staff noticed someone with statistics-defying luck
2- the staff couldn't figure out how he was cheating with their normal monitoring
3- the table was instructed to change decks and save the player's hand (it is a common procedure)
4- the anti-cheat staff looked at the discarded hand, concluded that no normal player would have folded on it under normal circumstances, analyzed the cards and found out about the IR markings
5- anti-cheat staff investigated who handled those decks and put them under increased surveillance
6- next time "lucky" showed up and showcased his odds-defying luck, they busted him and his accomplices to find out what his IR detection method was

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[Oligonicella]

can somebody explain how the casino was "cheating" in this instance?

Sure. They weren't letting everyone go home with a blue ribbon.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[GrumpySteen]

The casino wasn't cheating. Casinos have cameras that can see everyones hands during a game and record everything, but those camera feeds aren't available to the croupier. If someone has a winning streak, they'll go back and review the recordings to see if the player was doing anything suspicious.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[DJ Particle]

One aspect of this trips my "wtf" meter: How did a customer mark the cards without being detected?

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[DJ Particle]

Never mind...apparently it was an inside job.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[RightSaidFred99]

It's common sense. You don't play games of skill against the house, only games of luck. Or one-sided skill, I guess. The dealer never makes decisions, only follows a set of rules.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[chrismcb]

You're leaving out something really important and the real reason that he got caught: the casino was cheating too. Otherwise they wouldn't know that he had good cards when he folded.

That's like saying everyone who watches the World Series of Poker on ESPN is cheating. The Casino isn't really playing, so its ok for them to know what your cards are... doesn't mean they are cheating.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS

[EndlessNameless]

> The casino can't legitimately claim that they know he was cheating because he folded on good hands unless they were cheating and knew what his hands were.

They can record the games and review them if anything suspicious happens. Perhaps there was other odd behavior, or perhaps the winning streak was unusual. When they reviewed the footage, they saw highly abnormal behavior that prompted an investigation.

As long as the casino employee at the table isn't getting information from the surveillance, the outcome of the game remains the same.

Infared Contact Lenses?

[dutchwhizzman]

Shut up and take my money!

How do you make these? You need something that will convert a frequency our eyes can't detect, in your focal plane (it's a contact lens) into something you can detect without changing direction of the light wave. Never mind they cost allegedly $2000 I want to know what the science behind them is.

Re: Infared Contact Lenses?

[Woek]

Well actually it's not in the focal plane, that would be the retina, but your point is valid!

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[retchdog]

maybe the lenses are actually a very precise notch filter for a color of ink matched close (but not quite) to the color of the design on the card backs? by applying this ink very carefully you could, in principle at least, add what appear to you as dark markings that way. seems pretty tough to pull off, but i have no other idea.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Infrared-Goggles!-For-Under-$10/

I think this is how they did it. This isn't true IR, but near-IR. The ink would need to be near IR but I think you could find something that would work and it would be all but invisible under brought lights at a casino.

For those to lazy to follow the link. Someone makes near-IR goggles using welding glasses and two theatrical movie light gel sheets. Am guessing someone in china would be willing to make this into contact lenses. With the right equipment you could make them your self.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Cyberax]

Simple - they aren't. Frequency doubling materials can make near infrared visible, but they can't really fit into contact lenses.

Most probably, these lenses are simple polarizing filters and the invisible paint is an optically-active liquid. Alternatively, it can be a highly-refractive liquid - it'll be visible because it polarizes light a little bit differently than the reflection from the card's surface (different Brewster angles). Bonus points: it'll be visible only at a certain range of angles.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[mysidia]

They probably hid a pattern on the card using visible colors, so a lense tinted with the right color would make the pattern visible to the human eye.

What's so nasty here is the degree of the penalty.... they cheated the Casino out of 21,000 EUR, so they don't get to keep the 21K and each of them has to pay a 100,000 EUR fine, plus two years jail.

Now if instead; the Casino was cheating, the Casino could have to pay a fine or damages that would be some miniscule fraction of the casino's revenue.

On the other hand... if a player cheats; the penalty is astronomically higher, in relative terms.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Eskarel]

Well actually the penalty for a casino cheating is to have their gaming license revoked, at least in civilised countries where they don't just kill you for cheating the casino. Having your gaming license revoked shuts down your casino, potentially for ever. Even a new owner may not be able to get a license so even the property itself isn't necessarily worth anything to you.

Given how much revenue a casino generates, that's one hell of a fine.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Sqr(twg)]

It's near-infrared - not infrared - whoever wrote TFA probably does not understand the distinciton. Essentially, the near-IR markings on the cards are too faint to see in normal light. You then wear lenses that diminish all light, except near-IR, by a factor 100 or so. The eye compensates for this, and as a result the markings become visible.

I found this by googling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCO2y0zszyE

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[hankwang]

Near-infrared ink (as posted by an AC) sounds like the most plausible approach. In the range 700-750 nm, the sensitivity for light is less than 1% of the peak sensitivity. You would need (1) a proper long-wavelength-pass filter, (2) ink that absorbs only in this wavelength range, and (3) an illumination source that is heavy in this wavelength area (e.g. halogen/incandescent lights).

For the naked eye, the ink would appear as a very pale cyan color. With a proper filter, everything would look very dark due to the filter removing 99% of the visible light, but the ink would show up with much more contrast. Effective long-pass filters do exist, e.g. Schott RG695 or RG715 for a 695 or 715 nm cut-off, respectively. There are plenty of suitable dyes. Probably you would want to have this filter only on one eye, otherwise the world around you might appear very dark.

The other theories that have been posted here make no sense.

Frequency-doubling needs extremely high intensities (like a high-power or focused low-power laser beam), which would render you blind. Moreeover, frequency-doubling requires proper phase matching, which boils down to the requirement of an exact combination of angle and wavelength.

Polarizers: it is not possible to turn unpolarized light into polarized light without throwing away half of the light. Once the light is polarized, the polarization direction can be manipulated with optically active materials, though.

A high-refractive index coating would not only change at the Brewster angle, it would make the cards much more glossy as seen from any angle. It is not possible to make the refractive index change dramatically within a short wavelength range without changing the absorption as well, so the glossiness would appear in visible light as well.

A phosphor coating would not work for several reasons: phosphors do not emit the phosphorence in the same direction as the absorbed radiation; they always convert from short wavelengths to long wavelengths, and the phosphorence light would be completely out of focus.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Zorpheus]

Doesn't work with such low light intensities

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[tinkerton]

That's a reasonable explanation, but I would generalize it to any filter.

For starters, the only meaning of infrared lenses I know is lenses that are transparent for infrared, which is rather useless in this case since you can't see them.

A step of frequency conversion is also pretty hard since you've got to increase the frequency and using low energy photons to release high energy photons is a nontrivial undertaking.

But then we think of the fact that we are in fact extremely colourblind. If we take a bundle of light it covers a spectrum of about 400nm. Now assume that to represent this spectrum fairly accurately we need 400 parameters, one per nm. Our eyes will roughly reduce this spectrum to 3 RGB parameters, meaning that a huge space of color parameters look exactly the same to us. Someone who we call colorblind usually has two parameters.

Then a well chosen filter can indeed make two light bundles look different that look exactly the same without the filter. Just imagine you have two reds, one a rather wide spectrum and the other one very narrow. If a filter is tuned to block that very narrow spectrum and little more then one red will pass through while the other will be blacked out.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[hankwang]

...IR detector card has a strip of chemicals on it that glow pink when a remote control is aimed at it.

That is not frequency doubling, but a special form of phosphorence. Visible/blue light is used to generate long-lived excitations in the molecules. Infrared then excites them further to a slightly higher level with a short excitation lifetime; as that excitation decays, it emits visible light. It shares the disadvantages of common phosphorence: it is not directional.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Greyfox]

If it was polarity, that's an awfully big chance that another player will notice if they wear polarized sun glasses. I tend to forget mine are until I turn my head a certain away and can't read a gas station fuel readout or something. In a house game you're not so likely to wear them, though, and it sounds like they were playing a house game variant of poker.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Greyfox]

Why should the casino cheat? The odds are already in their favor. All they have to do is sit there and collect their money. I could see the dealers here having some incentive to consider it, as the non-tournament poker tables have a bad beat jackpot that accumulates and is paid out when an awesome hand loses to another awesome hand. It's usually something like a full house with aces over kings losing to another hand (And both player's hole cards must play.) It's usually around $100000 - $150000 with the losing hand getting 40%, the winning hand gettiing 30% and the rest of the table getting the rest. Typically the dealer will get a pretty fat tip off that, though I sat down at a table once and the dealer was complaining that another dealer had dealt one earlier that day and the guy stiffed him on a tip. So it's not even a sure thing for the dealer.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[hankwang]

... a well chosen filter can indeed make two light bundles look different that look exactly the same without the filter.

Yes, that's what makes the skin look weird under cheap white LED lights and older fluorescent tubes. This effect is called metamerism.

But unless you print the entire back sides of the playing cards with a pattern of two different inks that look the same under the casino lights but look different through your filter, you cannot use this to label cards after the fact. Ink absorbs light, so when applied to white paper, the surface will look darker than before, no matter what.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[tinkerton]

Ink absorbs light, so when applied to white paper, the surface will look darker than before, no matter what.

That made me think. You may be right in the case when the two reds in my example are mixed but if you put one layer on top of the other, even transparently, I am not sure.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[hankwang]

if you put one layer on top of the other, even transparently, I am not sure.

Ink on paper works like this: the paper acts as a diffuse reflector; the ink absorbs light for certain wavelengths, but the light that is not absorbed passes through without changing direction. Putting two layers of ink with different absorption wavelengths on top of each other will result in only the wavelengths that are *not* absorbed by either being reflected by the paper. This is the whole point of the CMY(K) printing process.

Maybe you are thinking of paint, which typically includes its own reflective particles. But paint needs to be applied in a much thicker layer (0.1 mm or 4/1000 inch) to do its job, so it would be rather noticeable; the deck of cards would be 5 mm (1/4 inch) thicker and you would be able to feel the paint with your fingertips.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[blincoln]

There's a problem with the theories all of you are coming up with - IR-pass filters appear black to the human eye. Unless casino staff were unable to see that there was something unusual about the guy with pitch-black irises, I'm thinking this is not what happened. In addition, unless the casino was lit with some sort of incandescent/halogen lighting or the sun, anyone wearing long-pass (visible-light-blocking) contacts would be blind in most indoor locations. Fluorescent and LED lighting put out basically zero near-IR light.

In addition:

- Near-IR really is infrared. It is "near" as opposed to "mid" and "far", not near as in "almost". It's the kind of infrared that remote controls used until RF (e.g. Bluetooth) became common, the kind that night vision goggles use, and the kind that CD drives (but not DVD or Blu-Ray drives) use for their lasers.
- Despite the arrangement of most spectrographic data arranging it to the right of visible light, all IR is longer-wavelength (lower frequency) than visible light.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Le Marteau]

"Why should the casino cheat? The odds are already in their favor. "

True. That's why you never see a casino go bankrupt.

Oh wait. Nvm.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[hankwang]

Another poster posted a link to a youtube clip of these contact lenses. They come with built-in fake irises, so only the pupil appears dark. Regarding the definition of near infrared: the standard range of visible light is assumed to be up to 740 nm, but I have worked with 800 nm near-IR lasers for many years and they are still visible, although a 1 watt beam appears to be comparable to that of a 1 mW laser pointer at 675 nm. See for yourself here for the sensitivity curve: http://cvrl.ioo.ucl.ac.uk/cvrlfunctions.htm (under fundamental spectra or luminous efficiency).

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[mysidia]

Why should the casino cheat? The odds are already in their favor.

Because they're greedy, and profits could be massively higher if their odds were even better.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[tinkerton]

I wasn't exactly thinking of paint or ink , I just didn't know that light passes completely(but filtered) through the 'ink' layer twice. Informative, thanks.

Re:Infared Contact Lenses?

[Magius_AR]

True. That's why you never see a casino go bankrupt. Oh wait. Nvm.

That's from mismanagement. Either expanding too much, running ridiculously opulent shows/restaurants or other expensive attractions, or not saving enough money for "down times" such as recessions. A casino is never a losing venture, unless you make it so.

It was an inside job, too

[wvmarle]

It must not be forgotten that two casino employees were involved as well. That were the people who arranged for the cards to be marked, so the cheats could play their game.

No mention on punishment for those two. Not only were they accomplices, without whom the scheme would not have worked to begin with, they also breached the trust their employer placed in them. The latter is also a serious issue.

Re:It was an inside job, too

[Joining Yet Again]

"Employer trust" hahahahaha.

The only way an employer can put "trust" in an employee is to share ownership of the business, as in a partnership or co-operative. Anything else is just sleight of hand to get your employer to accept worse remuneration.

Re:It was an inside job, too

[wvmarle]

Dunno in what kind of backwards country you live, but where I live I have seen employees getting harsher sentences as breach of trust of an employer was involved.

Here there is the expectation of honesty of an employee. So that you can e.g. have an employee work with customers, without expectation that said employee is trying to cheat the company using their position. Or that you can expect that a casino employee is not out to help customers cheat on the casino.

Re:It was an inside job, too

[Joining Yet Again]

My point, unnecessary as it seems to repeat it, was that you're not putting trust in your employee unless you give them an ownership stake.

IOW, trust is something which leaves you fucked if someone breaks it - as in trust in a personal relationship. It's not trust if you have a well-established legal framework to run to if things go wrong. Make sense?

IR contact lenses can be bought here

[bactus]

https://www.gambleromania.com/5-sets-ir-contact-lenses

They marked the cards!

[opus_magnum]

It's not like they merely used some tool to better calculate odds, this is outright cheating and in other times (and on a riverboat) it could have very well caused that Derringer to go off.

Re:They marked the cards!

[Joining Yet Again]

Yeah. If I were caught cheating at high stakes gambling, I think, "I'm reporting you to the police," would be the most relieving thing to hear.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

So I get modded down for knowing actual facts about the casino industry?

I get modded down for bothering to find out that the player was cheating at a house game (Caribbean Stud Poker) rather than a player vs player game like Texas Holdem?

I don't see why using CCTV to monitor a house game where one player is winning heavily would count as the "casino cheating". Does anybody have an explanation?

Re:The house ALWAYS wins.

[jamesh]

Even if it somehow loses. They WILL find a way to win.

If the house loses, it's because someone is cheating. That's how they tell you are cheating - if you are winning in a game of chance with the odds firmly tilted in the houses favour then you must be cheating. It's that simple.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS is bullshit

[Joining Yet Again]

*dislike. Although sometimes "like", because people often treat familiarity with contempt.

You're right, of course. Any good casino can see anything you can see, and these dorks obviously played cockily, i.e. unrealistically. They probably didn't even make an attempt to hide their cards from people standing behind them - and if they had such a run of "luck", people would be very interested. Hiding gamblers' ruin is, after all, important casino buzz.

Gambling against the House should be treated like buying a snack: you get the enjoyment of a tasty nibble, but you lose money to pay for it. Sure, you can try to leave the store without paying for the snack, and you may get away with it once or twice. But you try it too often, and you're going to pay for all those snacks and more.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

get real

[frovingslosh]

In such a poker game, the player does not willing expose his cards for either a spectator or a casino camera to see. If that happened then someone else sitting at the table would have a team of accomplices watching everyone's hands and giving pre-arranged signals. Poker is not played with spectators watching all of the cards in any player's hand. Even casino cameras are generally overhead watching the cards to insure that none leave the table or are added, but players wouldn't play if they believed that the casino could read their cards when they took a well guarded glimpse of their dealt hand. Too much chance for a player to be cheated by the cameras if that could happen, as it would be extremely easy to signal to a house player or shill and win hands. No, if the casino knew what was in his hands they were cheating. Most likely they knew because the controlled the deal and dealt him some very good hands, expecting him to bet big and then lose to better hands they dealt themselves. When that didn't work they suspected that they were not the only ones cheating.

Re:get real

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an interesting theory, but the casino in question doesn't have any "player vs player" poker tables.

Instead they play a house game where each individual bets against the casino, as per the link above. The croupier's actions (on behalf of the casino) are predetermined by the game's rules, so it doesn't matter if the casino can see the player's cards or not.

The most common variant of this game is called Caribbean Stud poker.

Not exactly a new idea

[mendax]

This is a story right out of the old Mission: Impossible TV series. An episode used this exact premise in at least one episode I can think of to cheat a guy who was using the same trick at his own game. They way they beat him was by remarking the cards and then remarking them using a different technology. In that show, the game was baccarat instead of poker. Of course, this was television and rather fanciful, yet I'm glad to see that someone actually has done it.... and even happier to see that they got caught at it.

Re:Not exactly a new idea

[Richy_T]

It could be that it's been a plot device more than once but this was in a James Bond movie. And since it was also baccarat...

Re:Not exactly a new idea

[Richy_T]

Never mind. It appears that it is my memory that is at fault. Funny that. I could have sworn it was Bond and I have no memory of watching Mission Impossible.

Re:Not exactly a new idea

[Ambient Sheep]

The James Bond movie was Goldfinger and that was done by having a girl in a nearby hotel room using a telescope (or high-power binoculars, I forget) to spy on Goldfinger's opponent's hand, then radio it to him via a fake hearing aid.

Re:Not exactly a new idea

[Richy_T]

Interesting. Possibly I saw them both and got them confused in my head. It's likely been the better part of 30 years.

Re:Your Bullshit is BS is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, you're right ...

I hate it when Slashdot covers stories about casinos, poker or gambling. A large percentage of the posters and mods know very little about the gambling industry, but participate anyway.

It makes me realize that the same people must be posting comments about stories where I have very little knowledge of the subject matter. People in general seem more and more obsessed with "sounding" knowledgeable than actually being knowledgeable.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[Joining Yet Again]

So, what you mean is, if you want to cheat, cheat in a way that the people approve.

Everyone knows that capitalism has created institutions too big to fail, and most people were okay with the enabling (de-)regulation of the last 15 years - having voted in all the governments which supported them. So, the bailouts are really with the consent of the people.

Croupier?

[LMariachi]

What kind of poker games are they running over there that the house plays a hand?

Re:Croupier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Caribbean stud poker

Re:LTR

[wvmarle]

Well I read the article, which mentions at least two people on the floor (the player and an accomplice giving signals), plus two casino employees. Total four people. Summary involves only two.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[diamondmagic]

Well, no: It is politicians that created institutions they called "too big to fail".

There was never any danger in large companies going bankrupt. It's not as if when a company fails, their capital resources suddenly vanish into thin air.

Incompetent hacks

[gweihir]

They might have been able to buy an expensive gadget, but they did not have what it takes to understand the game. Folding with a really good hand is an absolute beginners mistake in this type of games.

Aw hell

[Arancaytar]

I was hoping they'd have done something cool with those lenses, like looking at the other players' face and body heat to determine their level of excitement/stress. Instead it's just a regular card marking fraud.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[Joining Yet Again]

Is it not posible to have one mention of anything related to capital without a dullard walking in and whining about how IT'S ALL DA GUBMINT'S FAULT? It's like bible bashers shrieking every time the Sky Fairy's name is taken in vain.

Companies, or indeed all the law which supports capitalism, wouldn't exist without "politicians". And politicians wouldn't exist without the organisations which support them. It's all one fun dynamic system and you get away with things iff enough of the right people are on your side.

Glass tables

[AC-x]

If it was a big game then it may have been televised, as they have glass sections on the tables to allow viewers and commentators to see what cards the players have. This may even be true of all large games regardless of whether they're televised to try and catch unusual betting behaviour (as was the case here).

Re:Glass tables

[Rockoon]

No, high limit casino poker games do not use glass tables or have cameras on them. That is strictly a television thing.

Also of note is that high limit casino poker games are often filled with players that are playing quite badly. The phenomena is sort of based on the players "threshold of pain" when it comes to what limit they are playing. There are several common types of players that sit in the highest stakes game in a public poker room but cannot play well for long period of time precisely because they are in that particular game.

The first common type is the player with a very big ego that cannot admit to themselves or let others know that the game is too large for their bankroll: Every time they lose a pot it hurts like a motherfucker because they cannot afford it, leading to them going on tilt or otherwise making decisions that arent even an approximation of optimal.

The second common type is the player that has an obscene amount of money in the bank. They are in the largest game in the room because there isnt a larger game in the room. Nothing that happens in the game will meaningfully effect their lives in any way, so sooner or later they start gambling-it-up because thats a lot funner than trying to play a solid game of poker when the results dont really matter.

As far as this story goes.. these guys werent playing actual poker.. they were playing a house game.

Glass tables

[AC-x]

Large televised poker games use a glass table so that viewers and commentators can see the players' cards. This may even be true of all large games regardless of whether they're televised to try and catch unusual betting behaviour (as was the case here).

Re:The house ALWAYS wins.

[Le Marteau]

" if you are winning in a game of chance with the odds firmly tilted"

If you play basic strategy Blackjack (which is easy, because almost all casinos allow you to use a basic strategy card at the table... printed matter the size of a credit card to use as reference to how to play the hands) the house advantage is about 0.44%. Shooting craps and betting the pass line with odds yields about a 0.8% house advantage. I hardly call that "firmly tilted"

In such games it is possible to win for quite some time... often, up to days of elapsed play... before the house advantage eventually causes you to become a net loser.

Compare this to the typical 50% advantage states typically have in lottery games.

Re:Just not careful ... etc... use data and analys

[Half-pint HAL]

The only problem is that this is a cheat that leaves evidence -- you don't get to take the marked cards away at the end of the night. Because of this, there's a risk that the scam has a very short shelf-life. They got €71k in a singe night, and were caught on the second attempt. Every gambler knows they should quit while they're ahead. No gambler does.

Out of curiousity...

[Dcnjoe60]

Out of curiousity, how did the casino know that he had "folded with an unbelievably good hand"? Everytime I've been to a casino, if I've folded, I didn't have to show my hand.

Re: The house ALWAYS wins.

[O('_')O_Bush]

The point was, the man in the article wasn't playing blackjack or craps, he was playing a game against the house that he shouldn't have been winning.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[diamondmagic]

Is it possible to stop repeating something blatantly incorrect? I'd suggest not blaming capitalism for what isn't its fault.

And no, you don't need politicians, you just need a justice system (i.e. a method of enforcing contracts). Go take a look at Hong Kong.

There should be no crime in gambling

[erroneus]

Let the gamblers game in every way. Gambling is a stupid thing and let them all have it. "Cheating"? Really? We have gamblers losing the world's economy and at the expense of the rest of the world, the gamblers are getting bailed out so they can do it some more.

Let actual gamblers do what they want. It doesn't harm the world. And let their continued operation go on as it is.

There's a law against this?

[braindrainbahrain]

If these laws had been applied in another era, two well known scientists would have been jailed for cheating at roulette . (Those would be Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon)

Re:The moral of the story is...

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

That assumes that people only vote for those they agree with 100%, which just isn't the case.

Re:The house ALWAYS wins.

[Oligonicella]

if you are winning in a game of chance with the odds firmly tilted in the houses favour then you must be cheating. It's that simple.

No it is not. Highly improbable events occur all the time and people do indeed win with some visible frequency. You also seem to be ignoring the fact that they indeed cheated and were proved to be doing so with empirical evidence.

The casino doesn't play poker.

[zippthorne]

It runs poker tables, you play against the other players. If he was cheating at poker, he wasn't cheating the casino.

The casino does play blackjack, though.

why fold a good hand then when the progressive sid

[Joe_Dragon]

progressive side bet pays even if you lose.

At poker? All they take is the rake

[Guru80]

I will admit, I didn't click through to the story but the summary says they took $90k from the House. The big poker game these days is Texas Holdem which is played against other casino goers, as are most other forms of poker, with the casino only collecting a rake on each hand. Cheating at that would cost the other players a buttload of money for sure but the house still takes their rake if he wins or not.

Marking cards has a pretty long history

[localroger]

As for the roulette prediction computers, they are the reason most jurisdiction now have anti-device laws. Counting cards is legal, although the casino can also legally throw you out for doing it. But using a computer is actually illegal.

No jail time if they'd mugged an old lady

[Anonymous Coward]

Why you sheeple dribble about all the irrelevant aspects (the only direct point of this story is that these crooks were too dumb to make the effort to 'win' in credible ways- the technology they used worked brilliantly), the real point passes you by.

In the UK, or France, or most of the USA, or in ANY Fabian controlled nation of the West, vile crimes against vulnerable citizens draw extremely MILD punishments. You can rob an old lady of 50% of her wealth, and so long as you do not kill her, a first time offender is almost certain to avoid prison. Carry out a non-violent robbery of an establishment linked to your masters, on the other hand, and even if you take a tiny fraction of 1% of their wealth, you will get serious prison time.

In the eyes of your masters, the sheeple are worthless garbage, and crimes of violence against the sheeple are of no real significance.

Think! THINK! why should the full force of the State be working to protect the interests of this 'casino'. The very concept of a casino is crime made flesh- a place specifically designed to con people out of their wealth using every psychological method known to Man. If a casino is too lazy to do simple tests for a gag as old as infra-red marking, why should one penny from taxpayers be used to protect the interests of the scum that own casinos?

There are shills here who constantly tell you that Obama's obscenities are in the interest of the sheeple. Exterminating the secular society of Syria, Obamacare, supporting the insane racists of Israel and Saudi Arabia, giving trillions to the wealthiest people in America, rewarding the most powerful financial crooks, growing the greatest war machine in Human History, prosecuting more whistle-blowers than at any earlier time, spreading torture facilities across the planet, and exponentially growing NSA full surveillance projects with the intention of ending ALL concept of privacy in people's own homes. Look about you (and this casino story is another example) to see the truth about the monsters form the so-called 'left' and the so-called 'right' that rule you.

Why is it that almost every citizen sees crime against the person as the form of crime they want to receive MOST priority, and yet live in nations were this form of crime receives the greatest leniency?

Re:No jail time if they'd mugged an old lady

[manu0601]

If a casino is too lazy to do simple tests for a gag as old as infra-red marking, why should one penny from taxpayers be used to protect the interests of the scum that own casinos?

I agree with that, but a poker cheater is likely to steal money from other casino's clients, and not from the casino itself. The victims are the weaks and it therefore makes sense that society pays to protect them. But money would be better used if we managed to avoid them going into a casino altogether

God of Gamblers (1989)

[Giant Robot]

This is old stuff. Chow Yun-Fat and his cronies have used this technology (in glasses and contact lenses form) to cheat poker over 20 years ago at a private casino event on a yacht near the shores of Hong Kong to get revenge on the man who nearly destroyed him!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-sliAVtxSE

Illegal in France?

[Cammi]

Interesting that this is illegal in France .... hahha

To cheat at poker successfully ...

[davidwr]

... you have to play a plausible game and not get too lucky.

You get too lucky without cheating and you are shown the door.

You get to lucky and you cheat, you attract a lot of attention and you will almost certainly be caught.

No, if you are going to cheat at poker and not get caught, make sure you don't win too much over too long a period of time, OR make a habit of spending your way to break-even at the end of every day. Cheat and win $100K a day at poker then blow almost all of it at craps and give the rest away in big tips and even if the casino thinks you are cheating they might look the other way, especially if you wind up encouraging others to gamble more and tip more. Try to take that $100K a day home more than a few days in a row and you'll be caught or if you are really lucky and not caught, probably barred and blacklisted.

Re:They were greedy (poker is different)

[triclipse]

Generally in poker you are not playing against the house; you are playing against other guests. The casino takes a standard rake per hand so the casino makes the same amount regardless of who wins.

Of course, they still don't want people cheating because that is bad for business.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[Joining Yet Again]

Err, no it doesn't. If there were a sizeable proportion of people who gived a fuck, they'd form a Party with new candidates, etc. The Internet makes this shit easy. Fact is that people are happy with things mostly as they are. I think that sucks, but it's true.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Err, no it doesn't.

Yes, it does. If you consider the fact that many people believe that voted for third parties is a wasted vote and will vote for a certain party just to keep the other party from winning, it becomes clear that just because someone voted for one of the two main parties, that doesn't mean they agreed with the bailouts. Now, they might not care enough to change their votes and stop voting for corrupt individuals, but that doesn't mean they truly consented to the bailouts in any meaningful way.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[Joining Yet Again]

You can't do it, can you? Just like a religious fanatic, lol. Can't let it go.

And your refuge is a former colonial outpost now ruled by a corrupt dictatorship in which all land is leased from the government, and which gains most of its wealth not from production but from moving money around. You are of low intelligence.

infrared contact lenses

[davydagger]

fuck poker, where the fuck do I score this crazy fucking cyber punk uber futuristic sci-fi infrared viewing contact lenses.

I didn't even know this was possible.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[Joining Yet Again]

It is a wasted vote because there are no viable third parties.

And there are no viable third parties because no one gives enough of a fuck to form them.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

It is a wasted vote because there are no viable third parties.

I wouldn't call sending a message a wasted vote.

But that wasn't the point, anyway. Lots of people do believe it is a wasted vote.

And there are no viable third parties because no one gives enough of a fuck to form them.

What do you mean by "viable"? Systems like ours produce two party systems almost without fail, so I don't see how forming yet another third party would change much.

Doing it wrong

[rossz]

If you want to make millions dollars with absolutely zero chance of going to jail, just join a major financial firm with good political ties and commit massive mortgage fraud. Just remember to make a large campaign donation to the president even though it isn't an election year.

Do infra-red contact lenses really exist?

[clive_p]

I can see that they are for sale, at an extraordinary price, on the web. But that doesn't mean much: it may just be that gullible buyers exist.

The real question is do they really work, and if so how? I'm not aware of any technology that is capable of converting infra-red to visible light except with a significant input of power, which is obviously not available in the case of contact lenses.

Re:Do infra-red contact lenses really exist?

[psithurism]

Unfortunately, neither the news nor most of Slashdot seems to care too much about the only cool part of the story. I was ready to go buy myself some night vision contacts, but I think I figured out how underwhelming these things are:

What I've managed to piece together from above comments (mostly guesses as well) is that they just block out all the normal wavelengths we see, save for deep red (almost infra-red but not quite). Since this makes the contact appear black (dark red), they put a fake iris in. You can find tutorials on how to build sunglasses or whatever to do this. My mom's tennis club passes around a pair of sunglasses that blocks most light not the color of a tennis ball and I think this works much the same way, but for deep red. I would imagine that getting the facilities to build contacts would be better spent on just buying the contacts if you just need one pair.

When his cohorts marked the cards with "infrared markings" their markings probably radiate or absorb just a little bit in the visible spectrum, but since this guy is only seeing that portion of spectrum and is in otherwise, to him, in a very dark room while everyone else would not know to ignore the noise of the rest of the visible spectrum. These would be like black-light markings you sometimes get marked with to get back into a club or something (though the other end of the spectrum), which become invisible when the rest of the spectrum is around, but instead of filtering over the bulb to reveal the mark, these lenses filtering over your eye so only you can see it.

TL;DR: the contacts appear to be legitimate, but they're rather underwhelming.

Re:Do infra-red contact lenses really exist?

[clive_p]

Thanks for that comment. I thought that it must be something like that. But a contact lens that blocks out almost all visible light except a tiny bit at the red end must make the user almost without usable sight. Wouldn't someone banging into the furniture in a casino and groping around them all the itme make someone suspicious? I retain a profoud scepticism that that there is anything in this story at all.

Poker is skill vs other players, not just luck

[billstewart]

Blackjack is just you against the house - a dumb player's going to get the standard odds and lose a bit, a good card counter can beat the house, but needs to play a good social engineering game to cover it up if they want to make significant money.

But poker's you against the other players, with the house raking off a cut of the pot. If you're better at it than the other players, you can beat them, and statistics isn't going to tell the house much because it's as much about predicting what how good the other players' hands are as predicting what cards are left in the deck, plus you might have a steady advantage because some of the other players are dumb about probability and you're not, or because you've got more nerve than they do when you're right.

I can't just say "so don't be greedy when you're cheating", because the reason you're cheating is that you're greedy, but you can't be too greedy or it'll be obvious. But yeah, this idiot was lucky he was being greedy in France, where he only had to deal with fines and jail, rather than Las Vegas where he might get beaten up by the mob, or the Old Wild West where he'd end up as the subject of a country music song with gunfights involved.

Odds in Casinos

[billstewart]

Some people are going to win a lot, some are going to lose a lot, most are going to lose a bit or occasionally win a bit. On average, you're going to lose, but the odds aren't overwhelming, just steady. The casinos need to have enough people winning that suckers will go in feeling like they'll get lucky, and unlike lotteries, that means that the odds aren't overwhelming.

Greed and Cheating

[billstewart]

If you're counting cards in blackjack, that's not cheating, it's just playing to win, and the casino doesn't like it when people do that, so they'll whine about it being cheating and kick you out if they catch you. If you're counting cards in poker, and trying to find which player is the sucker and what their tell is when they've got a good or bad hand, that's not cheating, it's part of the game, because it's a game of skill, not just chance. And faking your own tell may be card sharping, but it's not cheating, nor is having a pretty girl accomplice flirting with the sucker as long as she's not telling you what cards he has.

But if you're marking the cards? Yeah, that's cheating. So is keeping an ace up your sleeve, or using a mirror to look at your opponents' cards, or dealing from the bottom of the deck if you're the dealer, or putting a magnet behind the roulette wheel.

And loading your opponent's six-shooter with blanks for the gunfight that'll happen if he catches you cheatin'? That's way cheating.

Re:Greed and Cheating

[russotto]

And faking your own tell may be card sharping, but it's not cheating, nor is having a pretty girl accomplice flirting with the sucker as long as she's not telling you what cards he has.

Beating the other guy at cards and taking his pretty girl accomplice (who was flirting with you) to your room isn't cheating either, but in the movies he usually takes violent exception to it.

Card counting

[billstewart]

You might or might not get to keep your winnings if you get caught card counting. The people who make a lot of money doing it work in teams, because it's easier to cover up having some people doing the grunt work of counting and some being the dumb lucky high roller who collects the winnings by playing at the table where their team member indicates the odds are good. Also, if you're actually making a lot of money, you're winning chips, not cash, and you've got to get the casino to let you trade them back in for cash, which they might not do if they've caught you, even if they're not actually mobsters who are going to beat you up.

Re:The moral of the story is...

[Joining Yet Again]

Erm, I'm talking about people who think it is a wasted vote, not those who use their third party vote to send a message - I absolutely agree that it DOES work, as has been seen with the UKIP support causing the mainstream parties in the UK to move even further to the right.

They produce two party systems precisely because most people limit a "third vote" to send messages via single issue parties - then both mainstream parties react, and the party which reacts best gets into power.

People who think that both main parties are so shit that they're not worth voting for, are (rarely) either in such minorities as to be irrelevant, or (mostly) just lazy fuckers who like to whine. The majority of people are quite happy with the way things work, which is why they work as they do.

How did they know he was cheating?

[codeusirae]

How did they know he was cheating, cause he was winning ...

That's a quote from some movie, can't remember which one ..

Anyone here know it ?

Re:The moral of the story is...

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

They produce two party systems precisely because most people limit a "third vote" to send messages via single issue parties

There are more than just single issue parties, though. But really, our entire voting system is geared towards creating a two party system.

or (mostly) just lazy fuckers who like to whine.

I'm not sure that's true, but it's still better than voting for known evil.

Prison

[mynamestolen]

Prison is the real crime here. Why should the taxpayer fork out to lock people up non-violent crimes? Surely a community sentence doing useful work for some charity or other is ten times better? Crazy.

Another cheater busted in California

[billstewart]

gambling-pro-archie-karas-charged-defrauding-casino - The article doesn't say how he was marking the cards, but Archie Karas was arrested at his home in Las Vegas for cheating at an Indian Casino near San Diego. (The article also doesn't say why state police were involved; the casino's on an Indian reservation, and casinos are allowed to operate there because it's not subject to state jurisdiction, though California's tried to cheat the local tribes on that for years because they want a cut of the gambling take.)

Re:Another cheater busted in California

[mattack2]

and casinos are allowed to operate there because it's not subject to state jurisdiction

Nitpicky: then I think "allowed" is the wrong word.

But seriously, is there really no state jurisdiction? Maybe because I'm in CA, I've not gotten the whole story. I thought the states did have some control, which is why I thought states had to allow casinos on Indian reservations.. Just that (I thought) there was less control than over the main part of the state. If the states don't have jurisdiction, are the reservations still considered part of the state for census, etc?

Stealing from the mob is dangerous.

[macdaddy357]

2 years in the clink is a lot better than a pair of concrete shoes. They should be glad they got off so easy.

Summary factually wrong...

[zedrdave]

Both sources make it abundantly clear that the lawyer had nothing to do with catching the card shark, but merely released the statement indicating that casino security had spotted the scam.

Beside the failure at basic written English comprehension that could lead to that sort of error, I personally wonder how the editor could write that and not stop two seconds to wonder why a lawyer would be on a casino floor looking out for card cheats.

I've come to the conclusion that Slashdot editors do not really know what the word "lawyer" mean either, which explains a lot...

TFA picture?

[Applekid]

I'm more offended by the article's picture. Crappy chinese plastic chips and a rounded-off red die?

If you're going to fake a casino "moneyshot" picture, you might want to visit one prior to doing so.